Sun City Hilton Head, SC: Buying a Home in the Del Webb Community on the Beaufort and Jasper County Line

Every Wednesday, a newspaper called The Sun Today is delivered inside the gates of Sun City Hilton Head, and all of it is Sun City news (The Sun Today). Residents run a television channel too. Sun City Television is produced by a volunteer broadcast team and carried on Hargray channel 238 and Spectrum channel 1301 (Sun City TV). In the spring of 1999, 25 residents chartered a theatre club and named it Act One. It became the Sun City Community Theatre in 2001, and it still stages four shows a season (Sun City Theatre).

I'm Jeff Moran, NMLS #483943, a mortgage broker licensed in South Carolina through C2 Financial Corporation, and I have been in the mortgage business since 1996. I work from Bluffton, down US-278 from the main gate. Sun City Hilton Head is a gated Del Webb community in the Okatie area with more than 8,000 homes, three golf courses open to public play, and a theatre and a chorus that residents started (Wikipedia: Sun City Hilton Head). The Hilton Head-Bluffton area page covers the whole region, and it already explains that two Sun City homes can get their tax bills from two different counties. This page stays inside the gates: what residents have built here, what Del Webb is still building, and the specific things I would check on a Sun City address before you compare it with any other. The facts below come from public sources, cited beside them, and I checked them on October 2, 2026.

From a Union Camp pine farm to the first 100 residents

In early 1992, the Del E. Webb Corporation started looking at the land between Bluffton and Hilton Head Island as the site for a new community. The land belonged to Union Camp, which used it as an industrial pine tree farm for paper manufacturing (Wikipedia: Sun City Hilton Head). The following year, 1993, Del Webb agreed to buy 5,100 acres from Union Camp (Sun City Hilton Head: About). On January 20, 1994, at a press conference with Gov. Carroll Campbell, Del Webb announced that the project would go ahead, and construction began that April. The gates opened in June 1995, and the first 100 residents moved in that August. Pulte announced its $1.8 billion purchase of Del Webb on May 1, 2001, and Del Webb has been a PulteGroup brand ever since (Las Vegas Sun).

The association marked its 30th anniversary in 2025 with a "30 Questions for 30 Years" trivia game and a history page in its resident portal (Sun City Hilton Head). The association describes the community today as the largest age-restricted community in South Carolina, on about 5,700 acres, and Wikipedia names its three major phases Passport, Expedition and Pinnacle. I have not printed a resident count. The published figures run from about 10,000 to more than 16,000 depending on the source and the year, and the association's current number is the one to trust.

Still building in 2026: Sun City West, Spanish Moss Hall and Breakwater Fitness Collective

The newest section is Sun City West, off Sundance Drive. In 2024, the Island Packet reported that Del Webb planned 76 single-story homes there, about 1,360 square feet each, with two bedrooms, two baths and a two-car garage (Island Packet via Yahoo Finance). I could not confirm from a public source how many homesites are left today, so that is a question for the sales office.

On March 18, 2026, Del Webb cut the ribbon on two buildings at 1236 Sundance Drive, nearly 60,000 square feet between them (New Homes Guide Charleston, March 2026). Spanish Moss Hall is the clubhouse, with a stage, a 6,700-square-foot ballroom for up to 500, the Brackish Bar and Lounge and a catering kitchen. Breakwater Fitness Collective has indoor courts for pickleball, tennis, basketball and volleyball, an indoor pool, a track and fitness space, and an outdoor amphitheater is beside the two buildings. The project began in 2021. Its reported cost was $45 million in 2024 and $50 million at the opening (Builder.Media, October 2024). Del Webb says the community now holds $200 million in amenities and calls it the most amenitized Del Webb community in the country, and that is the developer's own claim.

The halls on Sun City Lane, the four gates and the dock on the Okatie River

A lot of what happens inside the gates happens in the halls on Sun City Lane, and the association publishes a full address list for every building (Sun City Hilton Head: Building Addresses). Pinckney Hall is the social hall. Its ballroom is where the lectures, workshops, dances and concerts happen, and the association's office is in the same building, so that is where the association itself is when you have a question. Beaufort Memorial lists a Sun City location at Pinckney Hall and brought its Mobile Wellness Unit there on March 10, 2025 (Beaufort Memorial). Magnolia Hall, in what the community calls Town Square, is the performing-arts hall, with stadium seating for 540 (55places). That is where the theatre club that began as Act One stages its four shows a season. The chorus and orchestra go back further, to a 1997 conversation between new neighbors. More than 50 came to the first meeting in January 1998, and 60 members were performing by that fall (Celebrate Bluffton and Beyond). The Pavilion, on the same lane, is where the Fourth of July is celebrated, with entertainment and fireworks on the Pavilion grounds (Sun City Hilton Head).

The other clubhouses on the association's list are on different streets around the community, and each one has something of its own. Besides the Okatie Creek Clubhouse, there is Hidden Cypress, with a fitness center and an outdoor pool, and the Purrysburg Fitness Center, with the Barataria outdoor pool at the same address. The Lakehouse has its own fitness center, tennis and pickleball courts and pool. The one nearest you depends on the neighborhood you buy in, and that is a small thing worth noticing when you compare two homes.

You come and go through one of four gates: the Main Gate and the Bull Hill Gate on Sun City Boulevard, the Kings Creek Drive Gate, and the Lake Somerset Gate on Del Webb Boulevard. The main entrances are off US-278, so the gate you use most depends on where inside the community the home is, and that drive is worth making once before you decide. Riverbend is a gated section of its own inside the community, 234 acres along the Okatie River on SC-170 north of US-278. It has custom homes on larger lots and a community dock on the river, so a resident there can fish, crab or put a kayak in close to home (Southeast Discovery). Riverbend is described as Beaufort County, and it carries its own line of association charges, which I come back to below.

In recent years, the Sun City Veterans Association has held its Veterans Day ceremony at 10 a.m. on November 11 in the Magnolia Hall parking lot, moving inside the hall if it rains (Sun City Hilton Head). Membership in the association is open to every resident, veteran or not. It has also paired with the Lowcountry Wind Symphony for a free veterans concert in the hall. If you served and are looking here, how VA loans work in South Carolina covers entitlement, the funding fee and what the attorney closing changes. The pickleball club's Low Country Pickleball Classic raised $20,000 for local charities, and $4,000 of that went to Staying Connected, a nonprofit of Sun City volunteers who help neighbors "facing life's challenges" (Staying Connected).

Three golf courses, and the one that reopened on October 1, 2025

Sun City has three 18-hole courses run with Troon, and all three are open to public play (Golf Course Industry). Okatie Creek, the original 1995 course, opened with the community. Mark McCumber designed it, 6,719 yards and par 72 with 15 lakes. It closed for a $4 million, six-month renovation that regrassed every green, fairway and tee, improved the drainage, restored the greens to their original size and enlarged the practice facility by half. It reopened on Wednesday, October 1, 2025 (Troon). Hidden Cypress, also a McCumber design, was the 2000 addition: 6,953 yards and par 72, at 671 Cypress Hills Drive, with Jameson's Charhouse at its clubhouse (Golflink). Argent Lakes is the executive-length course, par 61, and its address is 1291 Sgt. William Jasper Boulevard North, Hardeeville 29927 (golfinsuncity.com). That Hardeeville address matters below, when we get to which county a home is in.

The age rule, in the community's own terms

Sun City Hilton Head is an age-restricted community, and the rule is the community's own, set in its governing documents under the federal Housing for Older Persons Act of 1995. As those documents are described, at least one resident of every household must be 55 or older, and no one under 19 may live there permanently. A guest under 19 may stay up to 90 days in a calendar year (ActiveRain). The association posts its governing documents on its site (Sun City Hilton Head: Governing Documents). The recorded covenants carry the wording that applies to a specific home, so please read that section of the resale package rather than relying on a summary, including this one.

McGarvey's Corner, the SC-170 study and the November 3 ballot

SC-170, the Okatie Highway, runs along Sun City's eastern edge and then passes under a partial-cloverleaf interchange with US-278 that locals call McGarvey's Corner (Wikipedia: SC Highway 170). The main entrances are off US-278. A corridor study of SC-170 began in March 2025, run by the Lowcountry Council of Governments and the Lowcountry Area Transportation Study. It looks at six lanes from SC-46 to US-278, and six or eight lanes from US-278 to SC-462, the stretch past Sun City toward Hardeeville. A draft report was expected in spring 2026 and a final in summer 2026 (Bluffton Sun), and the study by itself does not fund any construction. I could not confirm whether the final report is out, so the Council's site is the place to check.

On November 3, 2026, Beaufort County voters decide on a one-cent transportation sales tax of up to $780 million over nine years. If it passes, it runs from May 1, 2027 to no later than April 30, 2036 (WTOC). Three of its projects touch Sun City's edge: widening SC-170 from US-278 to SC-462 at $103.8 million, US-278 from SC-170 to the Jasper County line at $52.0 million, and a diverging diamond interchange at SC-170 and US-278 at $18.1 million. The area page has the full project list and explains how a diverging diamond works. Jasper County voters do not vote on it, and because it is a sales tax, it would not add a line to a property tax bill on either side of the county line inside Sun City. Toward the interstate, Exit 8, where US-278 meets I-95, is being rebuilt as a diverging diamond. It is part of SCDOT's $825 million project on the first eight miles of I-95, which broke ground on August 14, 2025 and finishes in 2030 (SCDOT Fix the Drive 95).

Around McGarvey's Corner, Okatie Center, a 268-acre planned commercial development near US-278 and SC-170, is set to add a Home2 Suites by Hilton extended-stay hotel (LOCAL Life). North on SC-170, on the Hardeeville side, the Island Packet reported 650 new single-family homes coming in East Argent, a planned YMCA and the 312-unit Waterford Pointe apartments due in 2027 (Island Packet via Yahoo). Enmarket has proposed a store on about 26.6 acres at Okatie Crossing off East Argent Parkway (City of Hardeeville). Farther up the highway, the Port Royal Sound Foundation Maritime Center at 310 Okatie Highway has free admission and live animals, and the county's Edgar Glenn Boat Landing at 305 Okatie Highway puts a boat on the Chechessee River. Beaufort County has also bought about 140 acres of Okatie River watershed waterfront near the US-278 and SC-170 junction to keep it from development (Beaufort County Flood Brochure).

Hospitals and clinics near the gates

Beaufort Memorial's Okatie Medical Pavilion is at 122 Okatie Center Boulevard North, inside Okatie Center: 70,000 square feet, with a cancer center run with MUSC and Alliance Oncology and an outpatient imaging center (Beaufort Memorial). Novant Health Coastal Carolina Medical Center, with 44 beds, is at 1000 Medical Center Drive in Hardeeville at I-95 Exit 8, and the interchange rebuild moves Medical Center Drive to Dolnik Drive while that work goes on (Leapfrog). Two hospitals are being built in Bluffton, and the area page covers them. I have not measured the drive from Sun City to any of these, so when you compare two addresses, the drive to an open emergency room is worth timing yourself.

Beaufort County or Jasper County: finding out which side of the line a Sun City home is on

The first thing to settle is the county, because Sun City is not a town and not a census place of its own. It is a planned community in the Okatie area, and Okatie itself is unincorporated and spans both counties (Wikipedia: Okatie). A mailing address will not settle it. The halls on Sun City Lane use Bluffton or Okatie, 29909. Argent Lakes is Hardeeville, 29927. Spanish Moss Hall at 1236 Sundance Drive carries a Ridgeland address, and Homes.com lists Sun City sales with Ridgeland 29936 addresses (Homes.com). So the addresses inside this one community use four different post-office names, and none of them tells you which county a home is in or whether a town's rules reach it.

Some of Sun City's land falls under the City of Hardeeville's planning and the agreements the city has with Del Webb. Hardeeville's records show a planned development district for Sun City, and a 2022 master plan for a commercial parcel inside it that Del Webb still owns (City of Hardeeville). Under those agreements, the city collects impact and development fees as each new home is permitted (Jasper County, Miley report). I could not confirm from those records which homes are inside Hardeeville's city limits, and that is the part that reaches your wallet. So on a Hardeeville-side home, the thing to check is the parcel's tax bill, or the county's property record, for a city levy. On a new home there, please ask the builder whether the city's fees are already in the price. On the Beaufort side, I could not confirm from a public source whether any part of Sun City is inside the Town of Bluffton, and I am not going to guess. The Town's levy, meaning its own property tax rate, and its rental and stormwater rules apply only inside its limits, so it matters. Each county keeps an online parcel map, the property search where you type in an address and pull up the record for that lot. On Beaufort County's or Jasper County's map, the parcel record shows the county, the tax district, the fire district and any town, so that record is the first thing I would pull on any Sun City address.

Residents have asked this question out loud. The community's Government and Business Affairs Committee hosted a property tax session with Jasper County Administrator Andrew Fulghum. He explained how the bills are calculated and compared what a Sun City resident pays out of pocket in Jasper versus Beaufort (Sun City Hilton Head). The two counties' own levies and their school levies are different numbers, and the area page lists both from the 2025 state table.

The property tax bill on a Sun City home

A home you live in as your legal residence is assessed at 4% of its value in South Carolina, and other residential property at 6%. That percentage is the share of the home's value that gets taxed, and the county's tax rate is applied to that share. Under Act 388 of 2006, a 4% owner-occupied home is exempt from the school operating levy, and a statewide one-cent sales tax replaces that money (SC House Tax Policy Review Committee). So for a Sun City home at 4%, the school operating levy drops off the bill on both sides of the county line, and what remains is each county's own levy, its school debt levy and the fire district. A second home or a rental, at 6%, pays the school operating levy as well. Jasper County also lists a credit from its local sales tax that comes off the bill, and Beaufort County lists none. A purchase resets the home's taxable value, and the new figure shows up on your second bill after closing. The Bluffton page walks through that reset and the 4% application. The reliable comparison between a Beaufort-side and a Jasper-side Sun City home is two actual tax bills side by side, and the assessor for the county the parcel is in is who confirms the 4% assessment.

The association's charges at closing and every year

Sun City's association charges base dues every year, billed quarterly. Each neighborhood inside the community adds its own quarterly neighborhood dues on top, and those differ a lot from one neighborhood to the next. The fee schedule allows the association to raise the dues each year (John Sells Hilton Head). At resale, three more charges come due at closing: one calculated as a percentage of the sale price and two flat amounts. The three broker sources I found agree on the amounts and disagree on which one is called the new member fee and which the community enhancement fee (GoGated). Riverbend has its own, different line of resale charges. I have not printed any of those figures here, because the official schedule is behind the association's member login and I have not confirmed the numbers in the MLS. Please ask early for the complete resale package, all pages, which lists the base dues, your neighborhood's dues and every resale charge, and your purchase contract sets who pays each one. These are the association's charges. The only government charge on the deed itself is the state's recording fee, because South Carolina law bars new local transfer fees (SC Code § 6-1-70). The 0.25% fee on Hilton Head Island belongs to that Town alone.

Listing sites describe limits on renting a Sun City home, including a minimum lease length, a tenant who meets the age rule and a cap on homes bought as investments. I could not read those rules in the recorded covenants, so please read them there before you count on rental income. The way you plan to use the home also changes the loan: a rental or a second home is assessed at 6% rather than 4%, and the loan itself is written differently, so please tell me at the start.

Flood, wind, water and sewer at Sun City

Listing sites say much of Sun City is on higher ground, with many homes in Zone X, FEMA's lower-risk zone (SC Lowcountry Real Estate). The zone that counts is the one on the specific parcel on FEMA's map, and Beaufort County's current maps date from 2021. Riverbend's lots along the Okatie River are the ones I would check most carefully. In FEMA's high-risk zones a lender requires flood insurance, and the premium is part of your monthly payment. Unincorporated Beaufort County holds Class 5 in FEMA's Community Rating System, a 25% discount on a flood policy, while Jasper County and Hardeeville are not on FEMA's CRS list (FEMA CRS Eligible Communities, April 2026). So a flood policy on a Jasper-side Sun City home gets no CRS discount, and one on the unincorporated Beaufort side gets the county's.

South Carolina's wind pool, the SC Wind and Hail Underwriting Association, covers a coastal area the statute draws. In Beaufort County that area is everything east of the west bank of the Intracoastal Waterway, and Jasper County is outside it altogether (SC Code § 38-75-310; SCWHUA). Sun City is on the mainland at Okatie, west of the waterway. By the wording of the statute, that appears to put the community outside the wind-pool coastal area on both sides of the county line. That is my reading rather than a ruling, so please ask your insurance agent where the wind coverage on a specific home would be written. Either way, the wind premium is part of the monthly payment.

Water and sewer come from the Beaufort-Jasper Water and Sewer Authority, created by the legislature in 1954 and headquartered at 6 Snake Road in Okatie, and its notices to Sun City residents are posted on the association's site (Wikipedia: BJWSA). If you are buying a newly built home here, the builder's price carries government charges that a resale does not. On the Beaufort County side, the school impact fee is $9,535 per new single-family home south of the Broad River, and on the Hardeeville side, the city's development agreements carry their own fees paid as homes are permitted. I did not find Jasper County's amounts. Please ask the builder which of these are already in the price.

Your mortgage on a Sun City home

The county line inside Sun City changes the tax bill, but the loan limits are the same on both sides. A conforming loan is a conventional mortgage at or under the dollar limit set for the county each year, and FHA sets its own limit the same way. For 2026, both of those limits are the same figures in Beaufort County and Jasper County, and both are in the box below this article. The base dues, your neighborhood's dues, the homeowners policy, the flood policy where the zone requires one and the wind policy are all part of the monthly payment a lender qualifies you on. The resale charges are cash you bring to closing, alongside South Carolina's attorney closing costs, which the South Carolina page explains.

Once you have a Sun City address in mind, I can run the payment with that parcel's tax bill and that neighborhood's dues in it. Getting pre-approved in South Carolina covers what I will ask you for. You will see pricing for your scenario and choose a rate option, you can change that selection later, and the application opens from there. If you already own in Sun City and want to look at your rate or your equity, refinancing in South Carolina covers how that works here.

Nothing here is a loan approval, a denial or a commitment to lend, and it is not tax advice. The value used for a specific property, and whether it gets the 4% assessment, are set by the assessor of the county the parcel is in, so please confirm both with that office.

Common questions

Does a Sun City Hilton Head address tell me which county the home is in?

No. Sun City Hilton Head is in both Beaufort County and Jasper County, and its addresses use four post-office names. The halls on Sun City Lane use Bluffton or Okatie, Argent Lakes uses Hardeeville, and Spanish Moss Hall and some homes use Ridgeland. Each county has an online parcel map where you can look up a property by address, and the parcel record there shows the county, the tax district and any town. That record decides which county's levies are on the bill.

Is Sun City Hilton Head on Hilton Head Island?

No. Sun City is on the mainland in the Okatie area, off US-278 and SC-170, west of the bridges to the island. The Town of Hilton Head Island's levy, transfer fee and rental permit stop at the bridges, so none of them apply to a Sun City home. The Hilton Head Island page covers the island itself.

What is the age rule at Sun City Hilton Head?

It is the community's own rule, set in its governing documents under the federal Housing for Older Persons Act of 1995. As those documents are described, at least one resident of every household must be 55 or older, and no one under 19 may live there permanently. A guest under 19 may stay up to 90 days in a calendar year. The recorded covenants carry the wording that applies to a specific home.

Is Sun City Hilton Head still building new homes?

Yes. Sun City West, off Sundance Drive, is the newest section, and in 2024 the Island Packet reported 76 single-story homes planned there. Spanish Moss Hall and Breakwater Fitness Collective opened in that section on March 18, 2026. I could not confirm how many homesites remain, so the sales office is the place to ask.

Can anyone play golf at Sun City Hilton Head?

Yes. The three 18-hole courses, Okatie Creek, Hidden Cypress and the executive-length Argent Lakes, are run with Troon and open to public play. Okatie Creek, the original 1995 Mark McCumber course, reopened on October 1, 2025 after a six-month renovation that regrassed the greens, fairways and tees.

Will I need flood insurance on a Sun City Hilton Head home?

It depends on the FEMA zone of the specific parcel. Listing sites describe many Sun City homes as Zone X, outside the high-risk area, and Riverbend's lots on the Okatie River are the ones to check most carefully. In a high-risk zone the lender requires flood insurance, and a policy on the unincorporated Beaufort County side gets the county's Class 5 discount in FEMA's Community Rating System, while Jasper County is not on that list.